Wednesday Links: 7-8-09
Some news about books and ebooks from around the web:
- Everybody and their brother wants into the ebook game these days. AT&T is rumored to be working on an ereader. Borders UK also has an ereader in the works. Bookeen is coming out with their second ereader, the Opus—here’s a preview. There’s also the Ditto Book. And Sony is finally making their Readers compatible with Macs. Meanwhile, a publishing exec says, “the Kindle is only halfway toward becoming what a minimally functional reader ought to be.” Barnes & Noble is giving Amazon a fight at the Apple App Store and in ebook pricing, and TeleRead theorizes about the coming ebook wars. Plus, new publishers are saying no to DRM. From this angle, everything ebook looks robust and thriving.
- But beyond the ebook craze lurk darker problems for publishing. Via Bookninja, here’s a shot across publishing’s bow, courtesy of Alma Books. And there are horsemen in the distance. Books are being published solely, it seems, to be fodder for crappy movies. A couple of Chinese writers wrote an entire biography of Michael Jackson in 48 hours (and speedy books are evidently becoming the norm there). And even the excitement over a huge novel like Haruki Murakami’s next one doesn’t quite translate to ducats the way Sarah Palin’s book will, or Dan Brown’s next book, the cover of which is evidently news.
- Here are a few followups from past links posts. Gawker has a piece up about the last time Alice Hoffman got in a scuffle over a bad review; that time, she was the reviewer. GalleyCat has a roundup of author reactions to bad reviews, including links to stories about Dave Eggers and Ayelet Waldman. Also, J.D. Salinger won his court case against the author who wanted to write a “sequel” to The Catcher in the Rye. Also, here’s a lawyer on parody and copyright law. And Alain de Botton did an interview with Edward Champion in which he clarified his freak-out response to a bad review by Caleb Crain.
- Quick takes: Amazon has applied for patents for in-ebook advertistments; the Guardian’s 50 best summer reads; The Millions’s most anticipated books coming out in the second half of 2009; Tim O’Reilly says Kindle should open up or face death (I wish that were true); ebook-driven authors’ contracts restructuring could be good for everybody; can reading ever be a social activity? (I hope not); and John Wray, author of Lowboy, sells out poorly to Esquire, who are also running a free fiction contest (presumably not fashion-related).
- Random of the week: Here’s a crazy piracy scare video. Also, an archive of James Joyce’s dirty (really, really dirty) letters.
